


Case #0700927 Affinity

by LionThot



Category: LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Cartoon), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Near Death Experiences, Psychological Horror, Transformation, Watching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-31 15:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20796038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LionThot/pseuds/LionThot
Summary: Statement of Sonnie, regarding her experiences with the sport of beastie-baiting. Recorded direct from subject, September 27, 2070.





	Case #0700927 Affinity

The tape recorder clicked on.

“Statement of….?” The man asked, eyeing her down past his half-moon glasses, legs crossed as he sat back into the lounge chair. His smile showed flat white teeth, and she couldn't help but feel something was… off about it. It was the kind of smile she was intimately acquainted with: that of a predator about to strike.   
  
“Sonnie,” she offered flatly. His smile bittered to a thinly-veiled frown, bordering on scowling.    
  
“Full name, please,” he said, the words drawing thin.   
  
“Don’t think that will be necessary,” she said, leaning back into the dusty couch, its fabric bleached from time. “Not too keen on them.”    
  
“Very well then. Statement of 'Sonnie' regarding?”   
  
“Regarding my experiences with the sport of beastie-baiting.”   
  
“Statement number 0700927, recorded by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins,” he said smoothly.   
  
Sonnie felt his icy blue eyes bear into her as the words began to flow freely out of her and onto the whirring tape between them.   
  


“I’m sure you’ve probably heard of beastie-baiting, on the news or some such. Maybe even seen some footage. ‘The high tech underground bloodsport of the future,’ they might say, and show some poor sap getting his beastie slashed to bits. You might think you know it, but until you’re in the arena, smelling that rich iron aroma of spilled blood? Until you feel the crowd roaring, begging for carnage, until you feel the thundering steps of each beastie as they tear one another to pieces, you can’t truly say that you know the sport. At least, that’s what I thought before I started to fight. I didn’t have any idea how little I really knew.

Have you ever used an affinity link? It’s quite new tech and well… that doesn’t exactly seem like your type of thing. The bond it gives, it’s not… perfect. You can’t feel much on the outside, but on the inside? Being bonded with something so strong, so powerful, so… beautiful… It’s an experience like no other. Words can’t do it justice. It’s as intimate as it is empowering. The beasties we use don’t have minds, don’t have souls, but it’s not like they’re just clothes either. Being in there, becoming one with not just another living being, but a monster made solely for killing? Together, you become an unstoppable living weapon, and in that moment all you want to do is spill the blood of your enemy, to release the frustration and rage that’s been burning up inside for so long. Baiting gives you the opportunity to release all of that, to be free. And when you do cut down the other guy, the taste of victory and ichor is utterly intoxicating. It's a high like no other.

But I'm getting distracted: the point is, I don't just love the fighting, it's the intimacy of it all. It feels odd to say considering she's just a body, but you've got to understand that I  _ loved _ Khanivore. Together, we were something special, and I sometimes found myself longing to be linked in, not to fight but simply because I loved the feeling of being something else. Something more. Funny how that works out, innit?   
  
I suppose I've dawdled about long enough. Last year, I got snatched up by an estate gang. I know, I know, a twenty year old girl walking home alone drunk at night, that was all but asking for it, and believe me, I heard it from everyone after. They did what they do with pretty girls, and then they cut me to pieces after. I don't remember much of what happened, but I do remember what it felt like to die.

Laying there on the pavement for what seemed like hours, all I could feel was my life slipping away. An impossibly icy stiffness had snuck into me where my blood had been. If I hadn't been gasping for breath already, it would have left me winded, like the shock of freezing waters as you plunge beneath thin ice. My vision blurred to nothing, then slowly regained focus. I was at once acutely aware that I… wasn't. 

I’m not sure I knew what I expected, but as I sat there looking at my corpse, paralized with frozen numbness, it occurred to me that I was disappointed. No afterlife, no heaven or hell, not even nothing: simply cold and alone forever. Even the panic that I felt wasn’t invigorating; it was less like feeling an emotion, and more like hearing it from underwater. I tried to walk— well, move, away, but the further I got from my body, the icy grip of death tightened just a bit more. Suddenly, a thought occurred to me: I had felt this before.

Affinity links are an unequivocally powerful and intimate connection, but therein lies its downfall: Beastie-baiting is a fight to the death, and when your beastie dies… You’re not pulled out immediately. There’s a bit of a lag to it, and in those brief milliseconds it just feels... cold. Cold, silent, and empty. Everyone has a hard time coping at first, but we tell ourselves that it’s not death that we feel, just a glitch in the wetware. Just an imperfection in the code, we’ll fix it next version. It's a lie, but a comforting one. A comfort I could no longer afford. 

It must not have been long before Wes and Ivrina found me, or else they wouldn't have had the idea to stick my brain inside of Khanivore. They never considered that she was never made to house a soul. They never considered that I was already dead, or maybe they did and were simply that desperate. Ivrina is a talented surgeon, but the surgery didn’t work; it couldn’t work. Watching Ivrina perform her art was sickeningly beautiful; I remember admiring the delicacy with which she handled my broken body, and the quiet elegance of implanting my nervous system into a beast never meant to accept it. There's when it happened. I had been unconsciously drawing towards Khanivore until I was all but inside of her, and as Ivrina began the laborious process of integrating my nerves, I felt  _ warmth _ . In an instant, pain racked my entire body, and before I could process what that meant, everything faded to black.

I don't know how long it was before I woke up again, but I might have wept with relief when I did. Khanivore's— my— life support pod was filled with a sickly sweet aerated gel that felt more like drowning than breathing when it filled my lungs. I didn't care, couldn't; I was simply overjoyed to have lungs in the first place. It took some time to get used to the body, but not very much. I was already deeply familiar with her on every level. What was new was how much I could feel while being inside her. Where before I was numb to the world, now I could experience it with more depth than I ever could before. Even when Wes figured out how to get my affinity link to work with my old body, now run by a single bioware processor connected to an a-link, that no longer felt like me. It was too fragile, too weak. Too numb. Nonetheless, it meant I would be able to fight again, and God did it feel good to get back in that arena.

For the first time, I truly felt alive. I knew my place in the world and without the need for an affinity link, I was faster, more reflexive, more agile than any adversary could hope to be. I was more ferocious too, savouring the taste of carnage. Yet beneath this simple celebration of slaughter, I was scared. I felt the chill creeping closer with every mistake I made, because if I lost I would have nowhere to go. The upside, however, was that that risk made victory so much sweeter. 

Before, it was rage that drove me, a cathartic release for a girl frustrated with her position in the world. Now, it was something entirely different. I craved the feeling of ending a life, of watching my opponent's face as they felt the terrible icy numbness that awaits us all. Not a glitch in the wetware, but the first beginnings of Death seeping through the affinity link.. It satisfied in a deep carnal place where my hate burned bright and never truly left me. Seeing the faces of my defeated opponents, eyes wide and shivering as they felt the cold sinking through their gut, felt as though I had eaten a fresh, hot meal. 

I don't know how much longer I've got left for this. Beasties aren't meant to live for very long, and people are beginning to target me specifically. Why wouldn't they? I'm the best beastie-baiter who ever lived. I'm on a winning streak so long I've forgotten the count. Everyone knows I can't keep winning forever. I just hope that next time I die, I have somewhere to go." 

Sonnie let out a relieved sigh, feeling strangely exhausted. Throughout her statement, that sensation of being watched had grown until it pervaded her conscious thoughts, yet never interrupted the flow of her storytelling. Only now had it let up at all, ceasing completely. 

"Statement ends," said the man in the grey suit, his voice losing its earlier intensity as he clicked off the tape recorder. Someone else may have interpreted the look in his eyes as relief after such a violent statement, but Sonnie recognized that look all too well. She saw it in her reflection after a kill— the look of someone who has just been fed after a long time without. She realized now that she had to leave, to get away from this place of technological relics and watching and eyes. The Archivist lazily crossed his legs, still peering over the top of those glasses. In that moment, she knew both that she wanted to kill him, and that she couldn't if she tried.

"Is that all?" She asked, her voice not betraying her fear. 

"That's all I need from you, yes."

Without need for more prompting, Sonnie walked out of the Archives, the indicator light on her affinity link glowing green. 

**Author's Note:**

> "Another beastie-baiting statement. Smirke could have only dreamed of an arena that naturally combined so many fears: Slaughter, Flesh, The Stranger, The Eye, and now Terminus as well. It shouldn't be a surprise, though. I've harbored suspicion for a while that Khanivore- er, Sonnie- might be an avatar of one fear or another. Too many statements have mentioned her for there not to be something more. The bug that Sonnie describes in her statement was found and corrected almost a year ago- however, those who face her in the ring have reported that it returned after facing her, often lasting much, much longer than the milliseconds described here. I wonder if she even knows what has chosen her, or if she's simply running from the inevitable like so many of us after our first taste of the supernatural. I'll keep tabs on her in the coming days for suspicious activity. End recording..."


End file.
